Kickass Women: Mary Church Terrell

We at the Pink Palace are curious about Suffragette (link warning – music and video autoplay), the upcoming movie in which white British women kick ass for the right to vote, though recent promotional efforts have been less than stellar, and some early reviews indicate that the film depicts a stunning lack of women of color in the suffragette movement.

In the United States, many women of color fought for suffrage, often facing discrimination from the same white women they fought alongside. Because of voting restrictions in the South, for all practical purposes most Black women did not receive the right to vote until 1965, forty-five years after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, despite the presence of many people of color in the suffragette movement since its inception. One of these amazing and kickass women was Mary Church Terrell.

A Colored Woman in a White World
A | BN
Terrell was born a free child to parents who grew up as slaves. On her father’s side, Terrell’s great-grandmother was Malagasy (from Madagascar) and her great-grandfather was white. Her paternal grandfather was also white. Terrell was rather fair, and she married a man who was also mixed race and also quite fair. Much of her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World, involves the politics of shades of skin color and the ethics of passing for white.

Terrell’s parents became wealthy after emancipation. Her mother ran a hair store, which sold the kinds of pre-crafted falls and chignons that women often used in addition to their own hair to create a stylish look. Terrell refers to her mother as “an artist” with regard to her skill with hair. Her mother also won a lottery with the help of a tip from a friend who told her she might have won, and the help of a maid who found the ticket at the bottom of a rubbish bin (Terrell’s mother tipped the maid $300 — as well she should). Terrell’s father made a ton of money in real estate. Terrell’s parents divorced and her father remarried, and Terrell was on friendly terms with her parents and her stepmother for all of her life.

Mary Church Terrell wearing a light colored gown beneath a large lacy parasol. her hair is up and she has bangs

Terrell’s parents sent her to a prestigious school that was attended by both white and African-American students. In her autobiography, Terrell sings the praises of diverse educational institutions, stating that she believes it is difficult for people to stereotype each other if they have actually spent a large part of their childhood together and on equal footing. Terrell went on to attend Oberlin College, which was open to students of any race at the time. After graduating, she studied for two years in Europe before coming home to be a teacher, then a principal, and finally a member of the District of Columbia Board of Education.

Terrell’s husband Robert, who became a municipal court judge, encouraged her in her activism. They seem to have had a loving relationship that weathered multiple tragedies and triumphs. Here’s an account from Terrell’s autobiography of her husband’s attitude towards suffrage:

When I told him that I had stood up in Albaugh’s Theater and had publicly taken a stand for women’s suffrage, he laughingly replied that I had ruined my chances of getting a husband. I told him that I would never be silly enough to marry a man who did not believe a woman had a right to help administer the affairs of the government under which she lived. Mr. Terrell, however, believed ardently in woman suffrage when few men took that stand. Nothing amused him more than to hear a self-sufficient, important young man argue against suffrage with a woman who had the points in its favor at her tongue’s end and who could deliver her verbal blows with telling effect. “Just listen to that young woman wipe the floor up with that narrow-minded, conceited, young coxcomb,” he would chuckle. “There won’t be a greasespot left, when she gets through with him.”

Terrell was a social activist in her role with the Board of Education and in her tireless work with women’s groups to assist women and children of color. She was also an ardent speaker who travelled all over the world on behalf of civil rights and on behalf of women’s suffrage. She was such a powerful speaker that when she considered stepping down as a speaker to focus on her family, Frederick Douglass not only asked her to continue, but he also begged her husband and her mother to encourage her.  Terrell’s mother cared for her children when she was away, and every time Terrell would become discouraged or nervous, her mother and husband would remind her that they had everything covered at home and that she should not waste her talents.

mary_church_terrell

In 1896, Terrell co-founded the National Association of Colored Women. In 1909, she became a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Terrell struggled with the same problem many Black female activists struggle with today: when she told the truth about what was happening to people of color, speak as gently as she might, people inevitably referred to her as bitter. Terrell insisted that she had met too many generous and supportive white people, and had too many positive life experiences to be bitter. But she also insisted on talking about the problems faced by people of color, and she refused to allow those needs to be ignored by the suffragettes of the day. Terrell believed deeply in the highest ideals of the country and never stopped fighting for those ideals to be fully realized:

As a colored woman I might enter Washington any night, a stranger in a strange land, and walk miles without finding a place to lay my head. … The colored man alone is thrust out of the hotels of the national capital like a leper. … Surely nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States, because the chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawn so wide and deep.

In her autobiography, Terrell talks about staying active in old age. She was picketing against Jim Crow laws in her late 80’s. Terrell faced terrible tragedy in her life (three of her children died immediately after birth) and many ugly encounters with what she referred to as “race prejudice.” However,  she never stopped finding joy in life. In her autobiography, she says,

I can still dance as long and as well as I ever did…I believe if a woman could dance or swim a half hour every day, her span of life would be greatly lengthened, her health materially improved, and the joy of living decidedly increased.

Mary-Terrell

For those who want to learn more about Mary Church Terrell, I highly recommend her 1940 autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World.

You can find one of Terrell’s speeches, “The Progress of Colored Women” at BlackPast.org.

For a list of other African-American Suffragettes, try the National Women’s History Museum article, “African American Women and Suffrage.”

If you are interested in the tangled relationship between Women’s Rights, Abolition, Civil Rights, and Women’s Suffrage, try this PBS article by Nancy A. Hewitt: “Abolition and Suffrage”

And another excellent article on the Suffrage Movement and racism in the US can be found at NPR, “The Root: How Racism Tainted Women’s Suffrage,” by Monee Fields-White

For a timeline of the Suffragette Movement in the US, go to “One Hundred Years Towards Suffrage, An Overview.”

And finally, for more about women of color and the Suffrage movement in the UK, Radhika Sanhani talks about the role Indian women played in the British Suffragette Movement at The Telegraph, in “The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism and the Suffragettes”

 

Comments are Closed

  1. Pamala says:

    Oh how it does my heart good to see Mary Church Terrell in this series! She’s long been one of my heroes/heroines and you’ve linked some awesome materials for those not familiar with her (though believe me, you should be :)) My women’s studies class in college was the last place I heard any meaningful discussion about her and her interesting and fulfilling life.

    Thanks for this!

  2. Karen says:

    Carrie – I really enjoy reading your posts on Kickass Women! I love learning about all these different women. You mentioned “race prejudice” and it reminded me of an old Anne Rice book called the “Feast of All Saints”. It’s an historical novel set in New Orelans before the Civil War. I read it years ago (it came out in 1986). This book was where I learned a lot about the history of free people of color in that age and the quadroon balls, etc. (There are no vampires or witches in this book.)

  3. Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand is a very recent biography of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, goddaughter to Queen Victoria, supporter of Indian Independence, nurse during WWI, and fierce suffragette. It was a very interesting read, and I think the Bitchery would appreciate it.

  4. Pamala says:

    @Karen, Anne Rice’s FEAST OF ALL SAINTS is an excellent novel and if you’re interested in a non-fiction book concerning the gens de couleur libre then I recommend:

    THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR OF NEW ORLEANS by Mary Gehman and
    CREOLE: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color by Sybil Kein

    🙂

  5. Dancing_Angel says:

    Proud Oberlin alumna here. So thrilled to see Mary Church Terrell getting her extremely well-deserved place in the sun!

  6. Karin says:

    A great piece about an amazing woman! Thank you so much, Carrie S. I sort of collect biographies and autobiographies of political activists, so I’ll be looking for this one, and clicking the other links too.

  7. Karin says:

    OK, had to comment again because I just looked her up and I am totally gobsmacked by the span of history her life covered. She was born two years before the Civil War started, and lived into the 1950’s, the Eisenhower administration.

  8. SB Sarah says:

    Another fascinating suffragette, from this article at British Protest written by Steffs92 in August: Sophia Durleep Singh.

    “In March 1909 Sophia join the Women’s Social and Political Union, and pledged a considerably large amount of money to the cause. However, from this time onwards, it was not just her money which Sophia donated as she became a devoted and well-known member of the movement.”

Comments are closed.

By posting a comment, you consent to have your personally identifiable information collected and used in accordance with our privacy policy.

↑ Back to Top